From an anchored vantage point in an expanse of the southeastern Bering Sea west of Alaska, Peggy, or mooring M2, had monitored conditions in the water for 25 years. A line of sensors extended down more than 70 meters to where Peggy was tethered to the seafloor, collecting information on temperature, salinity and other properties of the water.

Scientists may have finally figured out why some icebergs are green. Iron oxides could create the emerald hue.

Icebergs often appear mostly white because light bounces off air bubbles trapped inside the ice. But pure ice — ice without air bubbles that often forms on a berg’s underside — appears blue because it absorbs longer light wavelengths (warm colors like red and orange) and...

Finding the fish is going to get harder as climate change continues to heat up the world’s oceans. Increasing ocean temperatures over 80 years have reduced the sustainable catch of 124 fish and shellfish species — the amount that can be harvested without doing long-term damage to the populations — by a global average of 4.1 percent, a new study finds.

Scientists have long thought that children inherit mitochondria — tiny energy factories found in cells — from only their mothers. But data from three unrelated families suggest that in rare cases children can also inherit mitochondria from their fathers, Tina Hesman Saey reported in “Dads, not just moms, can pass along mitochondrial DNA” (SN: 1/19/19, p. 8).

WASHINGTON — Sea level rise, driven by climate change, is causing increased flooding during high tides along much of the U.S. coastline. Though such floods are usually minor, a new study suggests that car traffic patterns could help reveal how floods harm an area’s business revenues.

Tidal flooding events “are not one in a hundred years or one in a thousand years. They’re once a week,”...

Maybe the fourth time’s the charm. On February 9, an international team of scientists is embarking on yet another mission to hunt for ocean life that may have once dwelled in the shadow of a giant iceberg (SN Online: 10/13/17). The scientists, led by researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany, are headed to the Larsen C ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula, where a...

Overall, 2018 was the fourth-warmest year on record, and climate change trends suggest that temperatures will only continue to climb, scientists said February 6 during a joint news conference by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.

The agencies’ data show that global atmospheric temperatures in 2018 were on average 0.79 degrees Celsius warmer than the average...

Sea level rise over the next century won’t get a feared boost from Antarctic ice cliffs crumbling into the ocean like dominoes, a new study suggests.

The finding, published February 7 in Nature, is based on a new statistical analysis showing that such a rapid collapse of marine ice cliffs in Antarctica was extremely unlikely to have happened in the past, even during some of Earth’s...

New findings from an international ocean observing network are calling into question the long-standing idea that global warming might slow down a big chunk of the ocean’s “conveyor belt.” The first 21 months of data from sensors moored across much of the North Atlantic are giving new insight into what controls the strength of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, a system of...

Only months after their first ocean swim, young emperor penguins are braving Antarctica’s treacherous winter seas. GPS trackers strapped to 15 young penguins showed the birds venturing north to warmer waters beyond Antarctica’s pack ice in December 2013, and returning a few months later as the waters chilled.

That finding surprised some scientists, who thought the inexperienced juveniles...